


The Bread Which Cometh Down From Heaven

by omslice



Category: 19 Kids and Counting RPF, Counting On (TV) RPF
Genre: Cooking, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:27:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26780641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omslice/pseuds/omslice
Summary: Anna Duggar receives a vision from the Lord.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	The Bread Which Cometh Down From Heaven

The screaming of the children… it was relentless. Day in and day out, they screamed. Screaming for attention, for food, for milk, for a change of diaper, because they’d had their sleep disturbed, because another child had reached over with slobbery, sticky hands and commandeered a handful of their Sam’s Club brand Goldfish Cracker knockoffs, because they were simply in the mood to scream. It sometimes felt as if the very walls were screaming, melting. Anna had intrusive thoughts about sticking her hand into the toaster and pressing down the lever until the coils began to warm, seeing how long she could handle the pain, wondering what her singed flesh would smell like, would feel like, wondering if she’d win herself a night off from the madness, if the injury was enough to cart her away to the emergency room. Would Josh step up? Would Mackynzie? Would her in-laws come over to make sure that the children had not shit themselves and died in her absence? 

But to ask a question was, inherently, an admission that one did not know the answer to the question, that one was  _ seeking _ the question, and Anna already knew. One, that the second the toaster’s heat became unbearable Anna would find the  _ cancel _ button, worn and shiny from years of overuse, and release herself before enough damage had been inflicted to warrant any sympathy or first aid. Two, that if she found within her spine enough resolve to continue to the point of injury, that she would be left with a mess of her own making: one handed diaper changes, the troubled furrowing of the eyebrow upon the husband’s face that broadcast, clear as day, that she’d disappointed him. 

And so Anna avoided it, avoided the toaster, letting Mackynzie be the only one to provide hot toasted bread to her mewling, myriad siblings in the chaotic morning, serving up instead endless cold pop-tarts, giant value bags of Sam’s brand cereal, cookie trays of frozen French toast sticks. She felt insane, loopy, desperate, filling grabby little fingers with appropriately sized carbohydrates at every moment; so slap-happy in her misery sometimes that the benign became quixotic, a son became a cherub, a daughter a gnome. Mason spilled breakfast syrup on his little cargo pants. Someone was wailing. The air in the room was too-thin, like a documentary she’d once seen about Mount Everest when she’d been up late nursing some chubby blonde parasite years ago.

The kids noticed the toast thing.

Of course they did. It was one in a limited lineup of simple, kid-friendly and palatable carbohydrates easy to make, easy to serve, and good in bulk. Any child would eat toast, at any time, might refuse anything else. Marcus was throwing a near-fit, refusing his cereal, screaming that he wanted toast or nothing else.

Anna was at an impasse. She scoured the cupboards, looking for bread. Marcus’s shouts were stressing out the baby, who joined in with its own baleful caterwauls, and she wanted it to stop  _ right now _ . Where was Josh? Where could he be? Anna banished the usual doubts from her mind. He was a changed man, reformed. He’d confessed to Christ, the eternal Counselor, and been absolved of his sins. They were a family, a beautiful one, raising young warriors in His name. He was probably just occupied.

No bread. She found a bag of mega family sized white bread, which had been used up entirely, saved for a sad-looking heel at the end, the kind where it wasn’t even a full slice, but a sad shaving off the end of the heel that compared in neither height or thickness to an adequate slice of bread. And it was rock-hard. The bread, she noticed, had reached its sell-by date several weeks ago. Anna sighed, willing the Lord to give her strength, and turned to console her son, only to find that it hadn’t been Marcus throwing the fit, it had been Meredith; she’d been wrong somehow, been tricked. But Meredith knew that she was out of line; she should have been helping little Mason with his syrup shorts situation, rather than demanding her own whims to be catered to. 

“Meredith, we have no bread,” Anna explained, brandishing the empty bag of Wonder Bread like a white flag of surrender upon the battlefields of Normandy. “There’s no toast without bread.”   
  


“Then make bread!” Meredith screeched, her tiny child-mouth capable of the most devilish volume. 

Anna nodded, once, twice, several more times, the movement calming her, blocking out the chaotic sounds. One of the kids overturned a cereal bowl; it clattered to the floor in an impressive arc of milk and technicolor Os. 

“Yes, I’ll make bread,” Anna decided. “Yes, that’s what I’ll do.” She wiped her sweating palms on her jersey fabric maxi skirt, a cast-off from her mother in law, a sea foam green number with an outdated chevron pattern. “Mackynzie,” she commanded, “clean that syrup off Mason, get them settled. I have to make bread.”

The bread machine was stored in the attic, with all of the other ill-used appliances and forgotten wedding presents. It collected dust next to a Crock-Pot they’d long since outgrown as a family and a basket of formerly lice-infested teddy bears and stuffed Noah’s Ark playset refugees. Anna took a bin from beneath the sink and filled it with the supplies she needed. A packet of yeast jammed in the freezer, a bag of humidity-crusted white sugar, some white flour, a bottle of warm water from the tap, some oil and some cup measurers. Anna felt serene calm as she stashed her supplies. God’s grace filled her heart, and the screams turned to laughter and song somewhere between her ear canal and her auditory nerve. Yes, her children were cherubs, serving the Lord, singing His glory.

Anna climbed the steps to the attic, feeling winded. She hadn’t had any French toast sticks, any Frooty Os, any milk. But she felt as pure and holy as she had on the days He had compelled her to fast, hollowed out, a vessel for the Holy Spirit to fill and run over. 

There were outlets in the attic. Anna located the ancient bread machine, blew the gray dust from its lid, and opened it. She uncoiled the thick black cord from its underside, and plugged it into the wall. She’d taped a simple bread recipe to the machine’s side a long time ago, when she’d had far more time and energy for the more hands-on types of homemaking activities such as homemade bread or sweet tea that didn’t come from a canister of powder.

Anna ripped open the packet of active dry yeast with her teeth, sending some of the little beige granules skittering across the attic’s floorboards. She emptied it into the round pan of the bread machine and poured the water over top, delighting in the slight foaming and the comforting aroma it released. She stirred it with her finger, unable to resist, feeling the grainy yeast dissolve beneath her fingertip. Next, she added in the sugar (three tablespoons) and the flour (three and a half cups) and topped it off with a bit of oil (two tablespoons, but as she poured, too much glugged from the plastic jug and spilled into the pan). Anna shrugged, then turned to her bin. She had thought she’d forgotten salt, but there it was, hiding beneath the bag of flour, as if Jesu, joy of man’s desiring, had noticed her error and slipped it in there to look out for her. She sent a silent thanks skyward and sprinkled a teaspoon of salt atop the entire jumble. Anna closed the lid and selected the white bread cycle.

There was a plastic, or perhaps fiberglass, window on the lid of the bread maker that allowed the user to check on its contents without disturbing the process. Anna cleared some dust with the sleeve of her dark blue denim jacket so that she could watch. The flour spun, and the oil was folded into the dry ingredients, and with a minute or two of jerky kneading the texture and color became uniform. The machine whirred. Anna was hypnotized. She was knelt primly on her heels, and she hardly noticed as her legs fell asleep; it was similar to the position of prayer she’d held multiple times a day since she was old enough to sit upright. WHRRR WHRRR WHRRR went the bread machine. Anna lost hours.

Eventually, the kneading stopped, and the bread was ready to rise. Anna felt as if she’d been forcibly ejected from a trance, and she rose unsteadily to her feet, gripping a box of hand-me-down boy clothes for balance as her deadened limbs threatened to send her plummeting to the creaky floorboards. She waited for a few moments for her circulation to return to normal, grimacing as the painful pins-and-needles feeling flooded her legs before she could walk again.

Downstairs, the chaos had barely abated; Mackynzie was only thirteen. The children had left the kitchen, and some were being changed, but the sopping mess splattered across the floor and cupboards had not been cleared, and Anna stepped in a puddle of cereal milk, a purple and a green O shape ground into the ball of her foot as she pressed her weight down. Her sock was soaked. She suppressed a groan, sending a prayer of thanks to God for His bounty and plenty instead. How wonderful to be blessed with such abundance, how wonderful a thing to have one’s sock soaked by milk and honey? No matter that it was corn syrup. 

Anna cleaned the kitchen, head floating, movements slow and dreamy as she cleared the dishes, packed away the cold leftovers, wiped the counters and mopped the floors. The children were screaming, but Mackynzie was there; it was not as if there was any danger. Anna hummed a worship song beneath her breath. When she was finished, she went back to the master bedroom, which was still unmade, and heaped with baby laundry. Anna stripped off her socks and replaced them. She shut the bedroom door to muffle the cries and yells and got to work folding her children’s endless, Sisyphean output of laundry, started a new load of colors. When the bed was clear, she made it up, smoothing out the sheets and duvet and straightening out the pillows so that night it would be worthy of their Godly activities. If, of course, Josh decreed it. Anna ran her hand along the mattress as she left the room. She could hear Mackynzie’s raised voice shouting frantic commands at her siblings, but decided not to reprimand her for her tone. She walked down the hallway, where the smell of leavening spilled down the stairs, drawing her in like a wounded animal compelled a wolf or a bloodhound. 

As Anna drew closer, rising up the stairs and padding to the far wall, she could feel her head being drawn back into the trance with every step. The shouts faded into a background hum, which became the gentle buzz of a beehive, and then the dulcet tones of a distant choir, maybe the Vienna Boys’, back in the days when they still allowed castratos in the name of the Lord. Sunlight streamed through a skylight that did not exist, illuminating every speck of dust to a holy glow, beams filling the attic with Carlo Crivelli holiness: shades of ochre and butter yellow. Anna felt as though she walked on air, on a cloud of His grace. She dropped to her knees before the bread machine, filling her lungs with exaltation and yeast, the aromas swirling around and through her. She bent at the waist, touching her forehead, its warm surface a benediction. Anna passed several hours in ecstasy, the barriers between self and labor and delight blurring until there was no longer a self, only His bounty and His creations. All was one.

After a long time in rapture, Anna felt her forehead grow uncomfortably hot and reluctantly, she pulled back from the bread machine. All was quiet, the light had died down somewhat, but the celestial scent of freshly-baked bread had only grown stronger. Anna shifter her weight back onto her heels and came back into her own mind.

The lid was moving. It twitched a few times. Anna pressed the heels of her hand into her closed eyes, willing her vision to become reliable, but when she opened them again, the lid was unmistakably opening. 

From the pan of finished bread there was forming a maiden, gathering size and shape, one foot, two feet, five feet, her robes cascading to her white feet, which she used to step gracefully from the bread machine. Her face was bread, her robes were bread, her hair, which cascaded to her waist and was covered by a veil, was bread.

_ Anna, my daughter. _

She spoke not with the voice of flesh but with a heavenly song which did not pierce the eardrums so much as the mind. Anna trembled, averting her gaze. She stuttered out the Lord’s prayer beneath her breath, feeling like a shepherd in the field that had been called by the angels to rejoice. 

_ Anna, fear not _ , exuded the voice, and Anna gathered her courage. She raised her eyes to the celestial vision. 

“Lord,” she began, entreating, but she did not know what else to say. 

Before her, Mary glowed. She raised her hands, continuing to emit her lovely, earthen scent. She stroked her hands down Anna’s cheeks, where tears of wonder had begun to fall. Anna trembled. The Virgin Mary stroked her face, eyes beatific, consoling her child.

Anna was calm as the hands lowered, stroking her cheeks, her jaw, her neck; coming to encircle her throat. Anna did not scream as the vision began to tighten its grip. Anna’s vision began to black out as whatever spirit had visited her held firm, and in the house below, her children barely registered the thump as Anna passed out, her unconscious body hitting the floorboards. It would be hours before she was found.


End file.
